Disdainer

Formed in 1992, DISDAINER was a very promising, Athens-situated Heavy Metal act consisting of guitarist duo/(brothers?) Terry and John Papoulias, bass player Thanos Skopelitis and drumming vocalist Manos Papagiannakis (thus joining the same exclusive club as EXCITER, THE RODS, DECEASED and a few others…)

Musically, DISDAINER comes straight out of post-underground early-90s Heavy/Thrash Metal with METALLICA’s black album and PRONG’s magnus opus “Beg to Differ” as potential guiding lights. Songs stride forth with confidence, revolving around the interplay between Manos’s vocal lines and catchy riffs that integrate the palm-muted percussive attack of Thrash Metal with Heavy Metal’s sense of musical economy (very much in the vein of METALLICA’s most popular songs) – all backed up by a solid, back-beat rhythm section.

DISDAINER’s total output consists of 1993’s “Mindrise” demo along with a compilation appearance on “The Spirit of Metal” (1995), put out by the prolific Greek enterprise Underground Tapes. It’s actually quite puzzling that no label bothered signing up DISDAINER, because this band had obvious potential for making it on a grander scale. However, the members of DISDAINER did in fact release a Greek-language album some years later under the name Κύματα (“waves”), called “Σ’ένα Δωμάτιο” (1999), but by then they’d shifted style towards Alternative/Grunge/Hard Rock. Interestingly, back then it was probably easier for a Greek Rock band to get signed if they sang in their mother-tongue.

Compilation appearances:
* The Spirit of Metal [Cass, Comp, Numbered: Underground Tapes, 1995]